Countdown to Doomsday
by Electromotive Force
Summary: ONI subcontractor Michael Salazar monitors deep space for impending Covenant invasions. Living at the edge of star systems, his life is simple and sheltered. But the closer the Covenant get to Earth, the more complicated his job becomes.


**Countdown to Doomsday**

_**Prologue**_

**0240 Hours, 13 February 2535 (Military Calendar)/  
****UNSC Observation Outpost **_**Scrutiny  
**_**Edge of Lambda Serpentis System, Re-supply zone**

The inner crew quarters of a UNSC observation outpost were Spartan at best. Austere living conditions.

Cold metal deck plates and cold metal walls—if anyone could call them walls. They were more like cybernetic murals composed of snaking air ducts and mazes of fiber optic cabling and high-pressure lines that served to tame the relationship between stale air and hard vacuum beckoning only a meter away. The station only served one purpose: to monitor enemy movement in this vicinity of the star system. For the operators of this remote sensing station, there was little in the way of comfort and luxury.

However, this station had also undergone modifications recently. Its already robust signal-gathering ability had been increased significantly. Slip space drives were installed to increase the vessel's survivability. And to add, two new personnel had been assigned here—ONI sub-contractors.

Michael Salazar being one of them. He swiveled away from his networked terminal, rose from his cold chair and stretched to the view of Lambda Serpentis' twin stars blazing in the distance. It was a fuzzy, gemini pinprick of light. A cozy couple of M-4 class dwarfs on display right outside his view port, brimming with deep red. Not unlike Proxima Centauri.

He turned to a regular that shared his workspace at Outpost _Scrutiny _and said, "I'm going for a break; be back in a couple."

The technician gave a nod and went back to work.

There was little in the way of words here as well. No "Okay" or "Roger that". Just simple gestures was what everyone here at the outpost had been reduced to. Like always, new personnel like Salazar and his associate would come and go. Introduction and conversation was the subject matter more so than the task at hand. There was talk and talk and talk, seemingly for weeks on end, until everything in the entire Milky Way was said and done. Now, there was nothing more to say. Everyone had run out of conversation. And everyone was on each others' nerves.

Maybe that was why people rotated out of this dead end job every six months.

Salazar stepped out of the vault-like enclosure that was his "office" and over to the common area. "See you later _too_," Mike mumbled to himself.

He walked in a generally circular direction that was the station's motif. Basically, the outpost was a layered structure of stacked rings, joined one on top of the other in shrinking succession until the smallest ring made up the bottom. Just like a circular pyramid, only inverted. So traversing the innards of the vessel was usually nauseating. But what the confines lacked in form, they made up in function—many times over. The combined systems of the outpost could scan for electronic emissions in all directions in any portion of the spectrum. And since her primary mission was to monitor, she ran practically dark all the time with very little emissions herself. This meant there was very little chance in the crew of _Scrutiny _encountering any danger.

Salazar walked around tight corners, climbed a few ladders, and skirted by priceless electronics. They were worth more than ten of him. Burned in his memory were the endless transmissions of ONI memorandums, beamed straight towards his terminal. _CAPTURE OF UNSC C4ISR SYSTEMS IS ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE. FAILTURE TO DENY ENEMIES OF THE UNSC ACCESS TO COMMUNICATION-ELECTRONICS AND/OR ADVANCED NAVIGATION EQUIPMENT OF CLASS III OR GREATER CLASSIFICATION IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH UNDER ARTICLE 192/FTO, UNIFORM CODE OF MILITARY JUSTICE AND THE AMENDED ARTICLES OF THE UNITED SECURITY ACTS OF 2162. _After what seemed like a session of calisthenics, he finally found himself in the one place he wanted to be at the middle of every shift: the coffee bar. That warm, rich blend was all he had going for him since he reached midpoint of his tour at the outpost. Arriving in regular shipments from Jericho VII, the coffee was the only sustenance item that wasn't synthetically processed to withstand months of food storage. It always arrived in a near-fresh state.

He poured himself a stout mug, stirred in a finger of cream and a whole tablespoon of sugar. He'd need it just to keep sharp. Just like every shift he worked.

His ONI colleague was just outside the door, waiting for Salazar to turn his back.

Salazar did so, took only one look, and knew why Andrew Dyson stood there somberly in the hatchway. A familiar metal clipboard in his hand, the color of red. The color of death.

Mike looked in Andrew's eyes, sighed, and took a seat in a nearby chair.

The "Frag Binder" in Andrew's hand only meant one thing:

"Another colony."

Michael drew in a deep breath. "Which one?"

"Jericho VII. This morning."

Salazar could only imagine what it must've been like out there, millions of miles away from the _Scrutiny_. Space battles where the enemy outnumbered the UNSC fleets three-fold every time, with superior weaponry and resolve. The blackness of space was never a background when Covenant showed up, but rather just an addendum to the mix of munitions traded in the vacuum. Archer missiles and hypersonic MAC rounds and molten lances of pure energy criss-crossed the void and blotted out the starlight. Ground combat so fierce and unrelenting, it shook even the steadiest of soldiers. Plasma and metal and explosion and gore. Orders and chaos and fog and nightmare. And then, the enemy's inexorable final strike: orbital plasma bombardment. Wear down human defenses long enough, and the warships of the enemy would rain heavenly fire down upon their planets. All would turn to glass.

Salazar knew what it was like. Knew it all too well.

Human military forces had been campaigning the Lambda Serpentis system for a good deal of time, particularly the seventh planet. Located about equidistant from Reach to a major Covenant staging area, it was considered a pivotal region in the Galactic War with the Covenant—a tipping point in the struggle for mankind's survival.

This news of its loss was shocking, yet equally numbing; just another statistic and just another tally mark in the day's business. Salazar's charge for the last seven years was to pass on the latest and gravest news to all humanity, whenever the time came to do so. It was also his duty to make an assessment of the one tool the human race relied on to know how much time it had left in this epic fight. It was a fairly simple routine now. A chore that was becoming all the more _routine_ than anyone had liked.

The hands of the clock would inevitably move ever closer to midnight now—hour hand and minute hand. Both twined at under 11:45 at all times. And should the clock ever strike zero hour, it could only mean one thing: the enemy was on Earth's doorstep. And doomsday was at hand.

"Hello?" the subordinate said.

"Yes, I heard you," Mike acknowledged. He replayed some of his old memories once more, just for a microsecond. And he looked down to his right leg—the one he lost in combat, now just a prosthetic limb. The surgeons at the _Hopeful _medical super carrier had done wonders for him. He could still walk, and the advancements in neuro-kinetics had given him newfound strength. But there wasn't time enough to delve too deep into the past. "Authenticity?"

"…Confirmed. The communiqué was received from the UNSC _Resolute_ shortly after it fled the AOR."

"Alright, I'll power up the probes."

The fall of Jericho VII was confirmed. All Salazar had to do now was upload a report into deployable memory crystals, encrypt, and send the message away. Also, he'd reset the hands of The Doomsday Clock.

The memory crystals containing the detailed news of the battle would be inserted into a swarm of slip space probes. Such probes had an advantage over normal communications; they would arrive at the appropriate authorities far faster than conventional methods—capped at a maximum velocity of light speed. A probe would arrive at Reach—humanity's greatest military stronghold in the entire galaxy. A probe would arrive at Earth. And many more would arrive to neighboring colonies, so they could be alerted of the approaching danger and prepare for the worst.

The standard operating procedure would ensue thereafter.

The Doomsday Committee, so hopelessly dubbed, would evaluate Michael Salazar's recommendation and determine just how much closer the hands of time should move to the end.

Sometimes, Michael wondered why he even did his job at all. It didn't matter if the UNSC prepared for any battle or not; the Covenant always won. Colony after colony boiled away. And they weren't stopping. Soon, they'd make it right through to the inner colonies…then Reach. After that, Earth.

But perhaps the most intriguing aspect of his duties, and the most depressing, was the Doomsday Clock itself. Why even create such a contrivance…with such a name?

Surely, it would only induce panic—to let a species know just how close it was to extinction.

But perhaps such malevolent utilities had their worth. It was a powerful motivator.

Michael could recall, in detail, every event that took place when the hands of the clock inched closer to midnight. Military forces would tighten up, train harder, and renew their resolve—to great effect. Civilians galaxy-wide would support their warfighters until victory or death. And the ONI propaganda machine would in turn bolster every valiant move.

Like clockwork.

Then maybe some small measure of victory was achieved at some distant corner of the galaxy. Some morale boost somewhere in the UNSC was broadcasted. The hands of the clock would ebb, and humanity would breathe again.

Like clockwork.

A cycle of hope and suffering.

A viscous cycle.

And Michael was here in the clouds as always, watching the way the universe worked from here.

He felt a strange pang of cold remorse every time this happened, always left to just watch and do nothing. Cold remorse every time he witnessed another world and all its souls burnt to a cinder.

But there was little difference he could make at the fact. After all, he shouldn't even have been allowed to live after all the battle he'd seen. Maybe this job was his hidden calling, his salvation. Maybe he'd work this job until the worlds of the cosmos ended and he was all that was left. In previous wars, it was always understood that _you don't shoot the messenger. _And that's all he was. But the Covenant would never distinguish one human from another; he'd never receive the quarter that his species chivalrously preserved. He wondered if the only thing Human to ever survive in this bloody war were the capsules themselves. They were here, there, everywhere. Always traversing the galaxy to deliver news to the masses. They were the only safe messengers now.

Salazar had just finished launching the probe swarm and took one final look at the system's distant stars before it was time to perform the inevitable jump to a safer nest once again. Fleeing one star system's periphery to land in another, and report on its coming destruction. So that others could prepare for theirs.

**Author's Note: Well, here I go again creating another story. It seems I can hardly ever finish a story without creating another one. But I guess that has its good points.**

**Anyways, I wrote this all tonight after I saw an episode on the History Channel. You may know what it was. **

**I may continue this, maybe not. We'll see.**

**-EmF**


End file.
